Keep it in front of you, and it looks goofy and whatever. But you're gonna make sure that you don't lose all your stuff. Hi, everybody. My name is Mia Anderson, I have been traveling full time since 2015, and I want to inspire you and encourage you to start creating the life that you want instead of just falling into one this week, I'm in Athens, Greece, and I am on tour with refugees. I have extended my trip. I've been getting a lot of messages like asking about how I'm traveling by myself. I kind of wanted to address this single female traveler and give you some advice that I've learned from traveling for the past two years.
So tip number one is downloading Google Maps, Google Maps or maps me which I haven't used essentially, it's a way for you to get maps offline because even if you don't have service, your phone still knows where you are in Cuba, we can pin the house and that way when we went to the beach, we would know exactly how to get back. It's also really nice when you're in a taxi you can put in your home and you know that the taxi is bringing you to your home and not to another place. The other thing is you can put your ear buds in so here in Greece, I walk to the community centers that I volunteer in , so always just like walking down the road listening to my audio book or my podcast, and I have maps on and it'll tell me to take your left so that I know to take a left and I don't have to be that no matter what's going on and you being on target school has no idea where she is.
So if you act like you know where you're going fake it till you make it and get there if you're not sure then act like you know where you're going until you can hop into a cafe or somewhere that you can look at your phone. So building on that tip number two is don't make yourself a target. There are so many things that you do that you might not realize and have your phone out like this. Snatch it's gone, it's gone. Take our picture and then put it back your camera is also another big thing in Nicaragua.
A photographer taught me to put duct tape over like mine says Sony so put duct tape over Sony and kind of like a strap a little bit just to make it looks a little more worn. It's not like oh my gosh is a brand new awesome camera. It kind of looks like it's been in your backpack for a while. A a lot of my friends are getting engaged because it's like that time when we used to go to Mexico, my mom would always buy a fake wedding ring. So if anybody wants to rob you, it's a no brainer, please Take this target, really get it away from the next thing is like your purse. So my purse, let me go get it, you want a purse that's going to go can go across, but you don't want to have your purse on your shoulder like this, you want it to go all the way across your body like this even in front, not like back on your head. The other thing that's super handy, which I didn't even realize, when I bought this purse, it can also be a clutch or you can put your hands there and just hang on to it as you're like, strolling through the market. Because what's happening is people are taking scissors cutting this and then they take your person that's gone.
your backpack is another thing. So let me go back. Depending on where you were, I would not recommend wearing an outfit like this. But since it's what I'm wearing, I'm going to show you wearing your backpack like this on somewhere like the metro not ideal because you can't see what's going on back whenever I get on Metro and throw it on a front like this and just chill with it and it looks goofy and whatever. But you're gonna make sure that you don't lose all your stuff. See all these really handy compartments that make accessing your stuff really easy. Don't put yourself there. You can see there's like a Another pocket in here, put things in there so that it's easy for you to find, but not easy for people to take and we walk around, walk around the purpose. Don't walk around with your phone like Oh, you don't walk with a purpose like you know exactly where you go. You've done this 1000 times before.
Tip number three is where to put important things. Passport in Spain, my best friend Laura, lost your passport, take pictures of the passport either has it on your phone, or I print out hard copies. So if I do lose my passport, it makes the process of getting a new one really, really easy. And we went to Cuba, they don't take your credit cards and we weren't sure about the ATM. So we had a lot of money. Some of my prayers in my makeup bag in my electronics. If somebody stole my purse, I wasn't completely out of money.
Tip number four a lot of people, women specifically when they travel are really nervous about where to stay. I would hand down recommend a hostel and people are freaked out about hostels because it's a stupid movie a lot of times for women that have women-only dorms or like coed dorms so you can decide and people think that it's dangerous to have been with all those people better I feel like it's more eyes and more people that can help you some guys trying to approach you in the hospital getting too close, you can say something and there's a lot of other people in the room that will help you. So when you go and you meet people, a lot of times you'll go out.
So tip number five is Don't drink too much. Don't go out and be like, All right, we're gonna get a hammer. I'm in Amsterdam, I'm going to tryall the drugs that I've never tried before. This is not the place you want to have fun. You want to socialize and drinking beers better than drinking cocktails because you can see them open the bottle and you know that nothing is getting inside of it. But don't know you are not making sure that you make it home. You need to make sure that you are on your game.
I think is where a lot of people get in trouble to be were six is packed late. You are traveling by yourself, you want to be independent. You don't want to need someone else to have to carry your bags I've had with this thing. This is my bag, and I love these backpacking backpacks that has this really nice hip strap that you can see it's not even on my shoulders so it's all in my hips and this keeps it so it doesn't hurt your back too much. But you want to make sure that when this is on every thing is really tight. So this is nice and tight on to you, it should just be like an extension of your body then you can have this on the front. I love this combination. I've tried to talk with this inside, because inevitably, sometimes you end up with more than you go with souvenirs and different things. Again, you do not want to be the damsel in distress who's on the airplane and can't get her bag down because it's too heavy. You want to be super independent, get your stuff for not knowing what to pack, you pack enough for one week, and then you meet lots of friends so that you can wear the same outfit two nights in a row with two different groups of people. I really love this outfit and I went out with a different group last night and I'm going out wearing the same outfit. It's really that simple. I do that while I'm traveling I do that at home even for these, I have to like think about a new outfit to wear cuz I don't have that many clothes.
Number seven. I am a backpacker. I am very frugal and very cheap. The one thing that I do pay for is safety. When we were in Thailand, we had a the late-night flight that came into Bangkok. Bangkok is not really that safe place, especially at night so we paid the extra money to ensure safety. We asked the hotel to send a taxi for us, and I think that you should never skimp on that even here in grace when I go out at night and walk to the metro all the time. It's like a 20-minute walk. But at 11 o'clock at night, I wasn't so sure and I wasn't willing to risk it for $5 so I definitely called a cab and had him bring me last thing there is a Facebook page called girls to love to travel. It's growing at a crazy rate, but it's a really good way to find out information about your place you can either ask a question or you can just search, I'm gonna wait for this plane to or you can just search like I'm I have a layover. Yeah, I have like a 12-hour layover in Denmark on my way home, I can go in there and type Denmark and see what other people have talked about. It's a really great way to plan your trip. Do not be afraid to travel solo as a female. Let's be smart about it. That's it. Just be smart. I have learned these tips the hard way. I really hope that this was helpful. If you know somebody who's going to be traveling solo and you think these tips could help, please share it with if you found this helpful, and I'll talk to you all next time.
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